Book Launch: The 21st Century Fight for the Amazon

This book assesses current efforts to protect the Amazon, home to half of the world’s remaining tropical forests. In the past five years, the Basin’s countries have become the cutting edge of environmental enforcement through constitutional protections, military operations, stringent laws, police forces, judicial procedures and societal efforts. But even such advances struggle to curb ecocidal devastation by oil extraction, mining, logging, dams, and pollution. In every country, protection is crippled by politics, bureaucracy, unclear laws, untrained officials, small budgets, regional rivalries, ministerial competition, collusion with criminals, and the global demand for resources. Countries are better at creating environmental agencies, that is, than making sure they work. This book explains why, with chapters by those on the front lines: national enforcement directors, police chiefs, biologists and activists from each Amazon country.

Panelists:
Monique SegarraBard Center for Environmental Policy

Sherrie BaverCity College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

Clea PazUnited Nations Development Program and REDD+

Sponsored by: The Department of Political Science and The Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies.